Trust and Computing: Trust Higher when Machines Appear Human
A study on the other end of the uncanny valley to usual approaches - on how humanising interfaces is always going to be beneficial versus mechanical-seeming interfaces, because the illusion of humanity engenders trust.

The Tensegrity foot is a simple prosthetic foot, relying on natural motion rather than mechanics to recreate the gait of a normal foot - and without the price tag of a mechanical foot to create.

In the Works: MEMS Brain-Computer Interface
In 2008, Caltech researchers are working on developing a MEMS-based (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) brain-computer interface, with initial designs proving promising, and holding the potential to overcome the signal degradation problem.

Artificial Muscles Constructed From Wax-Filled Nanotech Yarn
Artificial muscles made from nanotech yarns and infused with paraffin wax can lift more than 100,000 times their own weight and generate 85 times more mechanical power than the same size natural muscle, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and their international team from Australia, China, South Korea, Canada and Brazil.

Twendy-One is what is described by its creators as "a human-symbiotic robot". Standing five feet tall, and weighing 245 pounds, Twendy is bristling with sensors and artificial muscles. Developed by by Sugano Laboratory, Department of Modern Mechanical Engineering, Waseda University, Japan, this robot is designed as a replacement for difficult to find and keep human care staff for elderly or infirm individuals.

Self-Charging Power Cell converts Mechanical Energy into Stored Chemical Energy
A different paradigm in power generation for implants and prosthetics, combines electrical generation and storage in a single thin three-layer flexible ribbon. Piezoelectric in nature, it builds long-term storage into the electrical ggeneration process. No other battery or powersource required.

Programming the Universe is a Simulation Argument book. Lloyd, a professor at MIT, works in the vanguard of research in quantum computing: using the quantum mechanical properties of atoms as a computer. He contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program.

(16/11/2008)
Scientists at Empa, a Swiss research institute, have developed a mechanical pressure sensor that can be embedded within orthopedic implants, close to bone fractures, to provide physicians with post-operative status updates.

T...

(27/10/2011)
Xiaohui “Frank” Zhang is integrating physics, immunology and biology to develop a “nanodevice” that could provide a new treatment for stroke, thrombosis and atherosclerosis.

Zhang, assistant professor of mechanical en...

(05/09/2005)
Simulation of mechanical systems

Mechanical systems simulation has always typically been a primitive branch of simulation. Individual moving parts have long been simulated working together, but a complete working engine in re...

(22/04/2009)
Utah and Texas researchers have learned how quiet sounds are magnified by bundles of tiny, hair-like tubes atop "hair cells" in the ear: when the tubes dance back and forth, they act as "flexoelectric motors" that amplify sound mechanic...

(24/08/2011)
Graphene, considered the most exciting new material under study in the world of nanotechnology, just got even more interesting, according to a new study by a group of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The new...